11 Trailblazing Electric Vehicles

There's a lot of hoopla surrounding the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf, both of which usher in the latest Electric Era next month. To be fair, this isn't the first time the auto industry, and auto journalists, have used words like "revolutionary" and "groundbreaking" to describe a battery-powered vehicle. EVs have been the Next Big Thing since Karl Benz's parents were still courting.

Still, for a variety of reasons it looks like EVs will actually catch on this time around. So to celebrate the promising automotive futures of years past, we're running down some seminal electric vehicles that changed transportation. Well, promised to, anyway.

As with many "firsts," there is some debate as to who built the first electric car. Credit usually goes to Scottish inventor Robert Anderson, who built an electric carriage with non-rechargeable electric cells. Around the same time, Dutch inventor Sibrandus Stratingh created an electric vehicle, as did Thomas Davenport of Vermont. No matter who created the first EV, it was rolling at least half a century before the Benz Patent-Motorwagen.

Above:

Edison's Electric

The father of the electric light bulb first created an electric car that ran on nickel-alkaline batteries in 1889. Thomas Edison's experiments with electric cars like the one shown above may have been a marketing ploy to sell batteries, or he could've been working on what was then a popular technology: Fewer than 5,000 cars were on the road in the United States in 1900, but 28 percent of them were electric.

Edison kept at it with EVs and even went so far as to build three prototypes, one of which emerged from a London garage earlier this year after extensive restoration.

Pope Electric Vehicle

1899–1910

America's first large-scale automaker was born in a bicycle shop in 1899. After building 500 or so EVs, Pope spun off its automotive division into the Columbia Automotive Company. Its products could've come from the EV catalog of the early 20th century: a runabout that cost more than a contemporary Oldsmobile but had a range of 40 miles, electric cabs and high-end vehicles whose silence and ease of maintenance were impressive to wealthy urban car owners.

Modern EV manufacturers may have stolen a few pages from Columbia's marketing playbook, too. Columbia drove a runabout from Boston to New York in 1903 to showcase its ease of charging and range. It took 23 hours to travel 250 miles.

Photo: Pope Electric Vehicle

Detroit Electric

1907–1939

In Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, Miss Roberta and Miss Fern's Green Machine was probably a Detroit Electric. They were known as high-end, reliable cars popular with women and the wealthy (Henry Ford's wife Clara, Mamie Eisenhower and John D. Rockefeller Jr. were all owners). Detroit Electrics were most popular during the years before, during and after World War I, when gasoline prices were high and gasoline-powered cars were unreliable and difficult to start.

Offered with lead-acid batteries or an optional Edison nickel-iron battery, Detroit Electrics had top speeds around 20 mph and a reliable range of 80 miles. Though the company sputtered on until 1942, the Great Depression did the company in, as high-end electric cars couldn't compete with increasingly reliable competitors powered by internal combustion.

Photos: Detroit Electric

GM Impact

1990

For nearly 50 years, the few commercially built EVs were tiny commuter vehicles hastily created in response to the two oil crises of the 1970s and the burgeoning environmental movement.

That changed with the General Motors Impact. The slick and sleek electric that made its debut at the 1990 Los Angeles Auto Show was the prototypical EV1. It featured a range of 80 miles, did zero to 60 in 8 seconds and had a top speed of 110 mph (electronically limited). Equally important, the Impact was more slippery than a greased ball bearing, with a drag coefficient of 0.19. It was the first truly modern electric vehicle.

Photo: General Motors

GM EV1

1996–1999

The Impact begat the EV1, which has been the benchmark since its release in 1996. The car saw limited release — and widespread praise — after the California Air Resources Board mandated that automakers build zero-emission vehicles. Lessees paid between $299 and $574 a month for a car that reportedly cost General Motors between $80,000 and $100,000 to build.

For a brief period in the late 1990s, it looked like automakers might be serious about viable electric vehicles. GM continued developing the EV1, and by 1999 its lead-acid batteries had given way to optional NiMH batteries with a range as high as 150 miles. But GM abandoned the project and infamously crushed all the cars despite the pleas of customers. The whole sad saga was chronicled in the film Who Killed The Electric Car?, and GM has been fighting that stigma ever since.

Image: General Motors

Toyota RAV4 EV

1997–2003

Toyota won the hearts of EV consumers with the first electric SUV. Although originally released only for fleet use, Toyota began selling them to individuals in 2003, until parts supplies were exhausted.

They've proven to be remarkably durable. More than 800 of the 1,575 RAV4 EVs built are still on the road, and some have more than 150,000 miles on the odometer with little or no degradation of range. It's easy to see why the little SUV was so popular: It offered a range of 100 to 120 miles, a top speed of 78 mph and all the versatility of the conventional RAV4.

AC Propulsion TZero

1997

Before the Tesla Roadster blew everyone's socks off, the AC Propulsion TZero proved an EV could blow everyone's socks off. It started as a kit powered by 28 lead acid batteries. It was an impressive machine capable of zero to 60 in a little more than 4 seconds and the quarter-mile in 13-and-change. It had a range of 80 to 100 miles.

Five years later, in August, 2003, creators Tom Gage and Alan Cocconi gave it a pack comprising 6,831 off-the-shelf lithium-ion cells used in laptops. That dropped the zero-to-60 time down to 3.6 seconds and boosted the range to more than 200 miles, proving that electric propulsion didn't have to be boring.

The car, and the idea of using commodity cells so impressed Elon Musk and Martin Eberhard that, working independently of each other, they urged AC Propulsion to market the car. Gage and Cocconi weren't interested, but they introduced Eberhard to Musk. The two men later founded Tesla Motors, and the Roadster was born.

Photo: AC Propulsion

Nissan Altra

1998–2002

The Altra is to Nissan what the EV1 was to General Motors — a truly pioneering electric vehicle that showed what was possible. The Altra, known as the R'Nessa in Japan, wasn't much to look at, and it wasn't terribly exciting to drive. But it was revolutionary, because it was the first production EV powered by lithium-ion batteries. It had a range of 120 to 140 miles, and its Sony batteries could be recharged in five hours. Nissan built just 200 of them, and most were used as fleet vehicles by utilities and the like.

Photo: Nissan

Tesla Roadster

2008–present

Say what you will about Tesla Motors, the Roadster without a doubt deserves to be called a "game changer."

Sure, it starts at $109,000. Yes, Tesla has built just 1,368 of them. And the company is making a whole lot of big promises about its follow-up, the Model S sedan. But the Roadster proved that electric vehicles could be fast, they could be sexy, and they could provide excellent range. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of that in pushing EVs into the mainstream.

Before the Roadster, EVs were boxy science projects, one-off concepts or limited-run specialty vehicles the automakers trotted out to meet a government mandate. Tesla made EVs an object of desire equally appealing to greenies and gearheads.

You could make a good argument that Tesla Motors spurred the big boys to get in the game. Former GM vice chairman and chief rabble-rouser Bob Lutz has credited Tesla with proving to GM that lithium-ion technology would work in the Chevrolet Volt.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Nissan Leaf

2011

This is it. This is the first, affordable mass-market battery-electric vehicle from a major manufacturer. As such, the Nissan Leaf will be a litmus test of public demand for, and acceptance of, EVs.

There's a lot to like about the car, which we've driven at various stages of its development. It offers all the comfort and performance of typical Japanese compact cars. It's got a usable range of 100 miles (more or less, depending upon how you drive, of course). And at $25,280 after the federal EV tax credit, it is competitive with the Toyota Prius.

Many automakers, from Ford to Volvo, promise to bring us electric vehicles of their own. They'll all be watching this car closely.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Chevrolet Volt

2011

No, the Chevrolet Volt is not, strictly speaking, an electric vehicle. When the battery runs down, a small gasoline engine drives a generator to keep the electric motor running (and, in very specific circumstances, help turn the wheels). That makes it a plug-in hybrid, according to the Society of Automotive Engineers' definition. But we're not going to wade back into that debate.

Still, the Volt — which will go 25 to 50 miles entirely on electricity — earns a place on this list. It is a big step toward the electrification of the automobile by a company that, despite its recent difficulties, remains one of the largest automakers in the world.

GM was the first big company to step back into the EV space when it unveiled the Volt concept three years ago. It promised to bring the car to market in three years, then threw almost everything it had at the project — and damned if it didn't pull it off.

You could argue that the gas assist is a cheat, but you also can argue it's a bridge between the internal combustion cars of today and the battery-electric cars of tomorrow. It renders the issue of "range anxiety" moot, and does it with a car that is, quite frankly, very impressive.